Launch. Scale. Exit: "The Data Was the Most Important Thing" with Bill Hammond, Founder, Big Data LDN

Some founders spend years building up to the leap of launching on their own. For Bill Hammond, the moment arrived all at once, in the form of a redundancy letter and a wife who was fairly sure he should stop working for other people's events and start building his own.

Bill spent over two decades in the tech sector, most of it in B2B publishing, before founding Big Data LDN in 2015. He built the event from a first edition that wildly outgrew expectations, through a pandemic that nearly derailed the exit yet ended up accelerating it, to a sale just six years after launch.

In this post, he shares what it took to build his brand from scratch, why he wishes he'd taken social media more seriously in 2016, and what he'd tell anyone thinking about going it alone.

What inspired you to launch Big Data LDN?

I'd been in B2B publishing from 1993 until 2005 when the internet pretty much killed off the print advertising market. I watched a lot of genuinely good people leave B2B publishing for events and decided to join them. I then spent 10 years learning how to launch and scale great events.

The lightbulb moment was realising that data itself had become the most important thing in the room. Everyone wanted to own their own data, and the people working in it wanted a community that was actually theirs. That told me what I needed to build.

How did you know it was the right moment to go out on your own?

The tech industry moves like a herd, and when I started moving into events, a lot of good people from my own network were heading the same way. I only needed two or three great customers to commit, and I knew others would follow. There was clearly space for a smaller, independent community built for tech people, by someone who understood them.

The actual decision, though, was made for me. I was made redundant in 2015 and suddenly had a straightforward choice: go and work for another big events employer, or finally do it for myself. I'd launched plenty of successful events for other people by then. My wife was the one who convinced me it was time to do it for myself, and she joined on the finance side. It was financially risky for us on a personal level, and that gave us all the motivation we needed to make it work.

What two or three decisions in the early years made the biggest difference?

The biggest lesson I'd taken from working for other people was the power of a strong brand. So, we invested in a designer early and built a genuinely strong visual identity from day one, carried consistently across the website, registration, social channels and right through to how it felt when you arrived at the event. I didn't want it to look like just another tech event.

The second was community. Tech people are brilliant with data, but they're also naturally good at telling stories with it, and they enjoy networking and public speaking more than people assume. There was a real appetite for an event built for them specifically. 

We also made a deliberately democratic call early on: this wasn't going to be a C-suite-only affair. We opened it up to juniors too, because we knew graduates became decision-makers faster than anyone expected, and we wanted a genuine grassroots community rather than another top-table event. 

What metrics ended up mattering more than you expected?

Our first edition ran in November 2016. We were expecting 1,500 people. 3,000 turned up. 

We got there by networking relentlessly, turning up to every event and meet-up we could find in branded t-shirts, handing out business cards. It snowballed from there as people started becoming genuine advocates for us.

What we didn't appreciate at the time was the power of social media. If we'd used it properly back then, I think we could have had 5,000 people at that first event rather than 3,000. As it was, the numbers we did get caught us out logistically. We'd planned a DIY approach to registration and quickly had to bring in an agency, along with more hostesses and proper speaker management, just to keep pace with demand.

What was the hardest part of launching?

It's very lonely in the early days. There's no back-up. You turn up and pitch your idea with a hope and a cheesy grin, asking favours and bending ears, and there's no one else to share that with. There were nights I woke up at 3am convinced it was a terrible idea and that I was getting it all wrong.

What was the most rewarding part of launching?

Getting to choose your own team and surround yourself with genuinely great people. We didn't even have an office, but as a team we talked every single day, which meant we could make decisions quickly. It was hard work, but it was fun and flexible in a way that working for someone else never quite is.

What might have sped up the journey from launch to exit?

Covid, oddly enough.

We were planning to exit in 2020 and were two to three weeks from signing when Covid hit. We pivoted almost overnight into online webinars and virtual events, moving a live show we'd already built into a format none of us had planned for. Our sponsors stuck with us throughout, telling us to keep the money and just deliver the leads instead. We ended up with 5,000 people attending online.

In 2021 we ran a live event in the narrow window when it was actually permitted. Attendance was a fraction of what we'd normally see, but everyone was simply delighted to be back in a room together. We grew like a rocket afterwards. We came out of Covid stronger than we went in, and it meant we ultimately sold for a higher price than we'd have got in 2020.

What was the hardest part of selling?

Due diligence, without question. It's so much harder than you expect. You're running the business day to day while simultaneously handling an endless stream of complex questions, and the workload and stress of doing both at once is significant.

I couldn't have done it without Steve and Anna from Manta. Their attention to detail was exceptional, and they held our hand through the entire process. If there's one piece of advice I'd give anyone approaching a sale, it's to get a really good advisor.

What mistakes would you not make again?

We once wasted thousands on a marketing list that got us very little. That one still stings a little.

The bigger lesson was around re-bookings. In our first year we had just two people trying to manage them, and it simply wasn't possible for two people to get around to everyone. When we eventually brought in an agency to handle it, the results were transformative: better cashflow, and it freed us up to focus on new business rather than chasing renewals ourselves. I wish we'd made that call sooner.

What's next for you?

I'm fairly retired these days, and pouring most of my energy into a house renovation. I'm also a non-executive director at Data Decoded, which means I get to stay involved in a great event, just without the crazy workload that comes with running one yourself.